CHAPTER XIII THE FIFTH SON

Arthur Wemyss, fifth son of the Reverend Alfred Austin Wemyss, Rector of St. Agnes, Tilbury Road, County of Kent, England, had but recently crossed the ocean.  He and six hundred other fifth sons of rectors and earls and dukes had crossed the ocean in the same ship and had been scattered abroad over Manitoba and the Northwest Territories to be instructed in agricultural pursuits by the honest granger, and incidentally to furnish nutriment for the ever-ready mosquito or wasp, who regarded all Old Country men as their lawful meat.

The honest granger was paid a sum varying between fifty and one hundred fifty dollars for instructing one of these young fellows in farming for one year, and although having an Englishman was known to be a pretty good investment, the farmers usually spoke of them as they would of the French-weed or the rust in the wheat.  Sam Motherwell referred to his quite often as “that blamed Englishman” and often said, unjustly, that he was losing money on him every day.

Arthur—­the Motherwells could not have told his other name—­had learned something since he came.  He could pull pig-weed for the pigs and throw it into the pen; he had learned to detect French-weed in the grain; he could milk; he could turn the cream-separator; he could wash dishes and churn, and he did it all with a willingness, a cheerfulness that would have appealed favourably to almost any other farmer in the neighbourhood, but the lines had fallen to Arthur in a stony place, and his employer did not notice him at all unless to find fault with him.  Yet he bore it all with good humour.  He had come to Canada to learn to farm.

The only real grievance he had was that he could not get his “tub.”  The night he arrived, dusty and travel-stained after his long journey, he had asked for his “tub,” but Mr. Motherwell had told him in language he had never heard before—­that there was no tub of his around the establishment, that he knew of, and that he could go down and have a dip in the river on Sunday if he wanted to.  Then he had conducted him with the lantern to his bed in the loft of the granary.

A rickety ladder led up to the bed, which was upon a temporary floor laid about half way across the width of the granary.  Bags of musty smelling wheat stood at one end of this little room.  Evidently Mr. Motherwell wished to discourage sleep-walking in his hired help, for the floor ended abruptly and a careless somnambulist would be precipitated on the old fanning mill, harrow teeth and other debris which littered the floor below.

The young Englishman reeled unsteadily going up the ladder.  He could still feel the chug-chug-chug of the ocean liner’s engines and had to hold tight to the ladder’s splintered rungs to preserve his equilibrium.

Mr. Motherwell raised the lantern with sudden interest.

“Say,” he said, more cheerfully than he had yet spoken, “you haven’t been drinking, have you?”